One inspiration for this "moral fable" in "Italian-Mozartian" style ("I will lace each aria into a tight corset") was Hogarth's series tracking the downfall of Tom Rakewell, who squanders his inheritance on women, gambling, and drink and dies in a madhouse. In Auden's much admired libretto, Tom is equipped with a sporadic moral conscience, as well as a satanic alter ego: Nick Shadow. As in Oedipus Rex, man is here a victim of implacable forces that control and crush him. But Anne Trulove, steadf...